Reconceptualizing The TPP: The Brotherhood Of The Three Blocs

The common perception of the TPP among informed individuals is that it’s an American-dominated ‘trade’ organization, a framework designed to secure the US’ top position vis-à-vis all of the signatory states. While that’s certainly true and isn’t to be disputed at all, there are also deeper, more subtle geopolitical goals that are being pursued at the same time, which if fulfilled, would greatly increase the viability of American power over this integrated sphere. It’s thus worthwhile to examine these finer intricacies that are often overlooked by many TPP analysts and introduce them into the larger conversation that’s being held about the topic. Upon closer scrutiny, it becomes evident that the TPP is designed to unify three distinct and expanding blocs, and that the US applies an economic version of its “Lead From Behind” stratagem in order to control the other two and thus secure its unipolar stranglehold over their Asia-Pacific and Latin American areas of ‘responsibility’.

The Three Blocs

On the surface of things, TPP seems to simply be about tying Pacific economies closer to the US, but there’s really a bit more detail to it. To get the full picture, let’s first list all of the participating countries:

As one can observe from above, most of the TPP countries are already in FTAs with one another, and actually, the arrangement is more like a union of the three blocs (partial in the case of the Pacific Alliance, as Colombia and Costa Rica are not involved) than a randomly scattered trading scheme. It thus becomes important to understand exactly what each bloc/core gains from the TPP in terms of new FTAs. One can refer to these official links for a comprehensive listing of all the FTAs that the US, Japan, and Mexico are currently in, but to simplify for the reader, here’s what each of them acquires:

US:

Everything new that the US gains from the TPP can be found in Asia, specifically in FTAs with Brunei, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Vietnam. Looked at another way, this is Japan, New Zealand (to complement the US-Australian FTA), and part of ASEAN.

Japan:

The only thing that Tokyo wins from TPP is a FTA with Canada, New Zealand, and the US. To put it differently, it clinches a FTA with the rest of NAFTA, and as with the US, it broadens its original FTA with Australia to include its ally and close economic partner New Zealand.

Mexico:

Mexico and its TPP-participating Pacific Alliance members of Chile and Peru already have FTAs with the US, Canada (or one can say NAFTA), and Japan, so the only things added for them are the new partnerships with Australia (except for Chile, which already has one with Canberra), Brunei, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Vietnam (partial ASEAN + Oceania).

Corporatist Cartels

Considering the cited research in terms of existing FTAs and the new multilateral ones that will emerge from TPP, it’s questionable what differentiating factor TPP has other than tying them all more formally together. What one should never forget, however, is that the TPP has clauses that hand de-facto political rights to corporations, thus making it the world’s first formalized system of post-modern “government” or “economic governance”. To put it bluntly, transnational economic actors begin exercising political rights over populations and their elected governments, while neither of these two subjects is able do the same to the corporations, thus creating a top-down vertical of power.

The “revolutionary rules” laid out in the TPP have the very real risk of essentially nullifying the FTAs that partner states have already struck with non-TPP members, such as Vietnam’s FTA with the Eurasian Union, or at least making them effectively unworkable for fear that the host government could be sued by a fellow TPP-member transnational corporation (TNC) for violating ‘unfair competition’ clauses. Other FTAs more preferable to unipolarity such as the one between Japan and India wouldn’t be affected by the TPP’s “economic governance” provisions, thus showing that the new rule regime could be politically selective in choosing and enforcing who gets discriminated against and which actors are ignored and allowed to prosper.

Geopolitically speaking, it’s easy to predict how the dynamics of this will unfold. The US and Japan are the two TPP members with the strongest and most active TNCs, and they’re distantly trailed by Singapore, Mexico, Canada, and Australia. The Six, if one can call them that, will certainly enter into some kind of TNC-related disagreements and controversies amongst themselves, but most likely, they’ll probably be much too busy divvying up their weaker Southeast Asian and Latin American counterparts to care too much.

Each of these six aforementioned countries, and especially the US and Japan, have TNCs that are very experienced in their operations, while states like Peru and Vietnam have the opposite type of experience, which is being on the receiving end of the TNCs’ activity. This established relationship is only expected to deepen with the TPP, and the target economies will thus inevitably come to be politically linked to their ‘parasites’, be they the TNCs themselves or the formal governments that they represent. New Zealand is a bit unusual of a case because it doesn’t have much TNC experience in either direction (exploiting or being exploited), but it could be projected to work together with its traditional Australian ally in conducting joint ventures in Southeast Asia, specifically Brunei, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

The US and Japan, as the two largest economies in the TPP, will just about have free reign to exert their influence throughout all of the members, especially the Southeast Asian and Latin American ones, although they’ll probably commit more attention to the ASEAN states owing to the “Pivot to Asia” and the perceived ‘urgency’ in ‘containing China’. Mexico will probably move along a different vector, and it can be expected to consolidate its influence over the TPP’s Pacific Alliance members. Part of the reason for this forecast is that Mexico already has institutionalized links with these countries through the Pacific Alliance, and the linguistic similarities and cultural ease of doing business there can streamline the country’s effectiveness in “economically governing” these states (Peru more so than Chile, which is way more developed and ‘wise’ to what’s going on).

Tightening The Chokehold

Thus far, it’s been argued that the TPP can be interpreted as an intertwined nexus of NAFTA, Japan, and the Pacific Alliance (partially). Considering that these three and their respective cores in Washington, Tokyo, and Mexico City will be coordinating even closer as a result (especially in the case of Southeast Asia and Latin America [more so mineral-rich, strategically positioned, and weakly governed Peru than Chile]), it’s topical to forecast the direction that their multilateral “leadership” cooperation may take. Generally speaking, its primary trajectory will be in strengthening their economic chokeholds over each of their respective regions, with ASEAN for Japan (with which it already has a FTA) and Mexico for Latin America, and both Tokyo and Mexico City will be fulfilling their “Lead From Behind” ‘obligation’ to the US as a result.

Looking at the first theater of TPP expansion, ASEAN, it’s predictable that more of the bloc’s countries would end up joining until the agreement includes the entire entity. Indonesia’s surprise announcement in late October that it would like to join the framework is a major step in this direction, and all of the other regional economies may now feel pressured to follow the largest one’s lead. It’ll take some time for Jakarta to join, but once it does, observers can expect most of the other ASEAN states to race into it as well, and if Thailand and Laos decide to participate, then this could seriously complicate their evolving strategic partnerships with China and inhibit Beijing’s pragmatic influence in the region. Of course, this is precisely what the US wants, so it and Japan will try to capitalize on Indonesia’s interest in the TPP to try to lure the rest of the bloc in with time.

Concerning Latin America, things are a bit ‘easier’ for the US and Mexico, as both of them already have FTAs with practically all of Central America and the western coast of South America (excluding Ecuador). The only two countries in Pacific Latin America that Mexico has yet to sign a FTA with are Panama and Ecuador, while for the US, it’s only Ecuador. If the TPP can be expanded to include the ‘hold out’ economies that both cores have FTAs with but aren’t yet part of the “economic governance” framework (such as Guatemala for example), then they can solidly enact a “legal” means of controlling these states and subverting them to proxy status for decades to come. More than likely, the ‘quickest’ path this could take would be in the Pacific Alliance expanding its membership all along the coast, likely absorbing all of the smaller economies with the exception of multipolar-oriented Ecuador and Nicaragua, and then pushing for the bloc’s new members to be admitted into the TPP.

In essence, what is being recreated is both the World War II-era Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and the Western Hemispheric version of the Spanish Empire, but modified for contemporary geopolitical conditions. To explain, Japan’s planned hegemonic status over ASEAN is exactly the same as what it had attempted to achieve in World War II, albeit this time without violence, and Mexico is economically trying to unite most of Latin America under its institutional influence just as Spain had done centuries prior (but with much more bloodshed). Other than the utilization of soft power and economic means as opposed to purely militaristic ones, the primary difference that today’s paradigm has when compared to the past is that each neo-imperial core, while motivated by their own self-interest, is indirectly fulfilling the grand strategy of the US through their ‘localized’ “Lead From Behind” proxy rule over their respective geopolitical spaces. In this ‘outsourced’ manner, the US is able to exercise its supreme hegemony over these spheres a lot more optimally than if it had sought to do so directly and through ‘outdated’ 20th-century means.

Concluding Thoughts

In the long-term, if the US’ grand strategy is advanced through the TPP, then East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific coast of Latin America will be part of the same trading structure controlled by Washington, which as just explained, will use it and its Japanese and Mexican cores’ TNCs to “economically govern” each of the vassal states. Concurrently with this, the US would also ideally like to conclude the TTIP with the EU, thus allowing it to economically strangle its trans-Atlantic “partners” with the same force that it’s already doing militarily with NATO.

In the fantasies of American policy makers, the US connects trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic trade while also dominating everything in the Western Hemisphere outside of Mercosur (and if Brazil has a Color Revolution or ‘constitutional coup’, then it too might get dragged into the net), using of course the revolutionary “governance” mechanisms rolled out in the TPP that are anticipated to become the ‘new normal’ in unipolar trading agreements. Stretching things a bit further, if India joins the US in its “Chinese Containment Coalition” and the Cold War between it and Beijing heats up to unprecedented proportions, then New Delhi might find a way to figure into this global Ponzi scheme.

None of these predictions are set in stone, and international politics always finds a way to surprise observers in some way or another, but for the most part, if left unhindered and to its own designs, the economic plans of a combined and coordinated TPP, TTIP, and an expanding Pacific Alliance amount to nothing more than a global economic coup d’état, and if allowed to succeed, then it could herald in a roaring return of repressive unipolarity right in the middle of what many had hoped would be the multipolar century.

The Essential Saker III: Chronicling The Tragedy, Farce And Collapse of the Empire in the Era of Mr MAGA

Leave a Reply

Leave a Reply

Click here to get more info on formatting

(1) Leave the name field empty if you want to post as Anonymous. It's preferable that you choose a name so it becomes clear who said what. E-mail address is not mandatory either. The website automatically checks for spam. Please refer to our moderation policies for more details. We check to make sure that no comment is mistakenly marked as spam. This takes time and effort, so please be patient until your comment appears. Thanks.

(2) 10 replies to a comment are the maximum.

(3) Here are formating examples which you can use in your writing:
<b>bold text</b> results in bold text
<i>italic text</i> results in italic text
(You can also combine two formating tags with each other, for example to get bold-italic text.)
<em>emphasized text</em> results in emphasized text
<strong>strong text</strong> results in strong text
<q>a quote text</q> results in a quote text (quotation marks are added automatically)
<cite>a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited</cite> results in:a phrase or a block of text that needs to be cited
<blockquote>a heavier version of quoting a block of text...</blockquote> results in:

a heavier version of quoting a block of text that can span several lines. Use these possibilities appropriately. They are meant to help you create and follow the discussions in a better way. They can assist in grasping the content value of a comment more quickly.

and last but not least:
<a href=''http://link-address.com''>Name of your link</a> results in Name of your link

(4)No need to use this special character in between paragraphs:&nbsp;You do not need it anymore. Just write as you like and your paragraphs will be separated.The "Live Preview" appears automatically when you start typing below the text area and it will show you how your comment will look like before you send it.

(5) If you now think that this is too confusing then just ignore the code above and write as you like.

At this time of grief, our hearts go out to the people of France, as well as to the people of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and other countries traumatized by deadly violence — people of all races, religions and nationalities.

This is a time of shock and fear, but also can be a time of reflection and action.

Glossary; ‘Mercosur’ mentioned above is a sub-regional bloc. Its full members are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela. Its associate countries are Chile, Peru, Colombia and Ecuador.

‘…transnational economic actors begin exercising political rights over populations and their elected governments, while neither of these two subjects is able do the same to the corporations, thus creating a top-down vertical of power’.

In other words, good-bye sovereignty, good-bye democracy. Why am I not surprised?

Thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed reading my article. To respond to your question, yes, I think that’s one of the implicit reasons why it’s pursuing the TPP and TTIP. It wants to desperately make sure that the dollar is remains the world’s reserve currency, or at the very least, is one of the primary currencies to be used in the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic space. It remains to be seen whether they’ll succeed in this case and it’s far too early to forecast what would happen in the next five to ten years if TPP and TTIP are in fact institutionalized by then, but my inclination is that it’ll largely work out to the US’ self-interested financial benefit at the expense of all its “partners”.

How many governments are in the US pocket to sign up to this? Vietnam – US corporations now control Vietnam. What the F##k did the Vietnamese fight for? 3 million dead and after defeating the US they sign their country over to the US?

Australian politicians are already owned by US corporations and alphabet agencies, but Vietnam….?

The TPP and its ilk are all about implementing the goals of Vision 2020–Full Spectrum Domination. It’s really all there in black and white published in the open for all to see, as TPP is now, too. The planet’s nations ought to know by now that the Outlaw US Empire’s intentions are as despicable as its goals. Absolutely anything it proposes must be shunned, ostracized. Sign up for TPP or its ilk and you’ll sign away your freedoms and human rights. Yes, they’re that bad!!

An example: The city of Hope ratifies a new law that forbids the selling of rat poison as salad dressing. Company Monstersilly sues Hope for $10 billions in expected future lost revenue, citing binding TPP regulations. The case comes to the TPP court. Hope and Monstersilly defend their positions and can’t reach a deal.

And here it gets really grotesque. Because according to secret, unpublished, undisclosed TPP regulations it is now up to a third party – whose authority is above all local, state-level, national and international laws – to decide the outcome of the case Hope vs. Monstersilly.

And who is this third party?

An ‘independent’, Banker-controlled private, law firm in New York. No kidding.

Thank you for your comments. I’m well-acquainted with the finer points of TPP, but I purposely omitted the specifics so as to focus more on the grand geopolitical designs being furthered by the agreement.

If TPP and TTIP do actually go through, get full-implemented and solidify, then this would have been a genuine masterstroke for US Imperialism an may prolong their hegemony for much longer than now seems plausible.

But indeed, things rarely work out just as they were planned. Keep in mind that these regions of the world were even more US-dominated than they are now, long before the concepts for TPP and TTIP were even conceived, but China still found a way to prosper through it all.

However, there can be no doubt that as TPP seems to be inching growing to implementation, this has to be acknowledged as a success for US policy. The future remains to be seen.

TTIP seems a bit problematic though, and that may be very good news for Russia & China.

In any case, I don’t think that Russia & China would be too disappointed if they manage their main Eurasian goals, while the US (along with Japan, AUS, CAN) gets to dominate the Pacific Rim.

Thank you again for a very good article. I hope you are right and “international politics always finds a way to surprise observers in some way or another” because the thought of the US/Japan/Mexico having this economic coup d’etat is very very worrying – when we are all hoping for this multi-polar world.

I have to say I was rather surprised Indonesia even wanted to look at this and also why Vietnam would ruin its agreement with the EEU – which would be more beneficial and fair.

This course provides an overview of Macroeconomic theory and policy, with an emphasis on the contributions of Hyman P. Minsky—perhaps the greatest macroeconomist of the Post-War period.
We begin with Keynes’s General Theory, which represents a revolution in economic thought. We review the neoclassical approach, and Keynes’s critique; we next examine Keynes’s main contributions in the GT; and finally we summarize the main Post-War “extensions” of Keynes’s theory—what became the Neoclassical Synthesis.
We then turn to the rise of the various strands of orthodoxy, which in the main resurrected the Pre-War neoclassical theory that Keynes had set out to destroy.
We turn next to an introduction to the heterodox strands that continued to build on Keynes’s revolution while rejecting mainstream “Keynesianism”.
We begin to examine the contributions made by Minsky, beginning with his early work on investment and business cycles. We next examine Minsky’s research on employment, distribution, inflation, and poverty, his critique of President Johnson’s War on Poverty, and his employer of last resort proposal. We then explore Minsky’s better-known reinterpretation of Keynes’s General Theory, and his development and extension of the financial instability hypothesis. The FIH is the best-known contribution of Minsky, although not necessarily the most relevant to today’s economy.
We turn to an analysis of recent heterodox contributions, especially in the areas of monetary theory and policy, growth, and fiscal policy.
We return to Minsky, examining his major book, Stabilizing an Unstable Economy, and then his work at the Levy Economics Institute, which represented a major advance over his earlier work. This will include his draft manuscript for a book on “reconstituting the financial system”.
We examine the Global Financial Crisis and its aftermath from the perspective developed by Minsky at the Levy Institute.
We conclude the course by looking at how we might reconstruct macroeconomic theory and policy to make it relevant to the world in which we actually live.

I’m in Australia, they are currently running ads on TV extolling all the economic benefits of free trade that will be coming our way. Reading comments on line in various newspapers many people are aware of the corporate takeover and are ranting against it, however both political parties are on-board and nothing will stop it.

That’s what I like about the Saker site – crisp analysis. It becomes very interesting if you add all the other modules of power and control like Neofeudalism (Look at the VW – Daimler – BMW – production – banking – insurance – cluster; all the people who are dependent on jobs from this sector and who are bound to them directly and indirectly) the media/science/industrial-complex etc. you see exactly the vertical consolidation of power Korybko is writing about. Throw in the ecological and economical collapse you have all the hallmarks of a global civilization that is actually a death cult.

The TPP seems to encompass MacKinder’s Offshore and Outlying Islands, the Rimlands sometimes known as Oceana, after Orwell’s ‘1984’.

Except Orwell envisioned a Sino-Russian split, which would be the only way Oceana would have a fighting chance against the ‘World Island’.

“Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.” – Orwell.

Certainly an excellent analysis. When viewed as just another prong of an effort to extend/prolong the US hegemony, Obama’s tenacious support starts to make sense. But then what about the other analyses that state TPP would undermine the US fiscal sovereignty? Why would US undermine its own nation-state? Because it is wholly owned by corporations, I assume. There is no nation-state left… just a semblance of what was… (and all those millions of people who need something to identify with). The treaty binds countries together, but also, in effect, prevents them from making binding treaties with nations not ‘in.” Very clever… and another way to isolate non-conformists (e.g., Russia). Why or how would China ever join? At this point, I hate to say, only the dramatic changes brought on by climate change can save us from the tyranny of corporations (how perverse is that?).

Sitemap

Saker Android App

An Android App has been developed by one of our supporters. It is available for download and install by clicking on the Google Play Store Badge above.

All the original content published on this blog is licensed by Saker Analytics, LLC under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0). For permission to re-publish or otherwise use non-original or non-licensed content, please consult the respective source of the content.